The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:

Subject: The Future of Our Free Republic

Dear Fellow Free Republic Member,

Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.

Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.

Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.

We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.

If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:

StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com

And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts

Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.

Apparently, this particular email message was sent to one of our FReepers by former FReeper, Vallandigham. The recipient forwarded it to me. Well, I'd like to respond.

First of all, there is not an extraordinary level of censorship on Free Republic. It's natural that those who get booted and have their posts removed will feel that way, but it is not an extraordinary level overall. The vast majority of FReepers have never been banned, never been suspended, never had a post pulled, and never had a moderator send them a warning message.

Those who get booted are usually posters who post racist materials, posters who post anti-Semitic materials, posters who post Holocaust denial materials, those who spread the "Protocols" nonsense propaganda, those who post Marxist propaganda and attempt to pass it off as truth, those who deal in tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, those who condemn others based on race or religion, those who condemn religion itself, those leftists who pose as conservatives or right wingers but constantly trash conservatives or conservative policy, those who call for armed revolution or other violence, those who blame America for 9-11, those who excessively bash our president, our war effort or our military, those who post excessive profanity, those who agressively engage in personal attacks, feuds and flamewars, those who register two or more accounts and use them as straw men or try to pass themselves off as different posters, those who post vulgarity or pornography, those who continually post off topic items, spammers, advertisers, trolls, liberals, anarchists, skinheads, nazis, communists, defenders of abortion, gun control, gay rights, peta people, etc, etc (Free Republic is not a liberal debating society).

In addition, people who were banned from FR for the above reasons but come back with a new account will usually get booted when detected and all of his posts removed, regardless of what he posted or whether he broke any rules under his new nom de plume.

Some of these very same repeat offenders will proclaim innocence and complain the loudest, like our friend Vallandigham here. Most of these people have swallowed the black poison pill of the darkside and are now doing all they can do to speed along the "imminent demise" of Free Republic. Some of them have registered and been banned dozens and even hundreds of times from Free Republic (no wonder they feel so mistreated and censored).

And, yes, scores of them have organized and are engaged in anti-Free Republic activities. This has been going on in the background for the last four years. These groups of the banned ones, "Great Ones" they call themselves as in "All the great ones have been banned" band together, create forums, scan FR all day long and bring back to their mouse holes little tidbits from FReeperdom and they post these little morsels on their forums, scurry around excitedly and condemn the FReeper or FReepers whose posts they find amusing. Then they proclaim "Free Republic will die at 9:30 on February 8th" and so forth.

This goes on and on until they get bored and then start feeding on each other (mainly because they love to hate, doesn't matter who, hate anyone even each other, I mean we are really dealing with the dregs of life's losers here). Soon they splinter, kill off their forum and start two or three new competing anti-Freeper forums and the cycle begins anew. And Free Republic lives on.

Peruse these pages. This forum is home to many banned posters and many posters who feel for one reason or another that Free Republic no longer meets their needs. That's fine. You will find on this forum unabashed racists, anti-Semites, Marxist propagandists, angry (and I mean very angry) people who bash everyone and everything, whackos, sickos, you name it. If any of our current posters think this would be their cup of tea, then I welcome you to it. Please. I'd love nothing more than to be boycotted by the denizens of these anti-Freeping forums.

Now, back to our writer, Vallandigham's complaint. This guy can't understand why he and his cohorts get banned every time they register new names on FR. Can't understand why Jim and his crazed moderators ban them over and over. I mean it's not like they've declared war on FR or anything. Quoting from some of their dialogue:

Gotcha beat on the bannings, ho ho ( Welcome Robnoel...been trying to get on your radio show, but you ain't answering my mail...):

"fargone"

"greatspectacular"

"sevendust"

"kindsir"

"gobshite"

"whatif"

...& a couple others I forget now, were all banned. As soon as I began bringing up the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, the Spooks & Gubm't apologist (Poohbah, CommonTator, sinkspur, bayourod, Torie, etc.) wd swarm, en-masse, on the threads, and, within minutes, I'd get the punt.

Finally gave up. Suckers is born every minute, and if the sheeple want to contribute to RimJob's new home addition or whatnot, that's their business.

Welcome, patriot!

And another answers:

Well Hey, in the last month I was banned as

Central Scrutiniser,

Peter Torque

Son Raw,

Estimated Prophet

Dotbomb

and Penasco

But, I have an endless supply of screen names and a desire to be a thorn in those asswipe's sides for a long time to come...

Yup, and we will watch the abuse reports pour in when they start posting, then a little comparison through our logs and, yep, a match. Damn, Robinson banned me again.

Well many of you are receiving these emails or FReepmails, so please, go visit their sites. If you are the kind that finds them attractive, by all means, stay and enjoy yourself. I'm sure FR will manage somehow without you.

Good morning, Jim! I'd like to emphasize one of your points, because it gets to the heart of the matter: these malcontents are just bitter, mean spirited people who are jealous they don't have the talent and skill, and yes, stick-to-it-ness that you have.

So to make themselves feel better, these disruptors set out to tear down FreeRepublic.

If these guys are so smart, why don't they invest the time and resources to start their own site? The answer to that, of course, is that they aren't so smart, because the bile and vitriol in their souls has overwhelmed their entire being.

Thanks again, Jim for creating FreeRepublic. As usual, you're doing the right thing.

While I don't support the idea of slaughtering millions who believe in Islam, the followers of Islam have declared war on us. If one out of ten of these people are willing to strap a bomb on to take a few of us out at a time, what do you propose. I don't see much alternative short of totally crushing them. You may say it is only the radicals but if you look at it more closely it is Islam that breeds these radicals.

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